Surreal Ascension

Jacob Van LunenWednesday, May 26, 2010

ello and welcome to Rebound Week here on magicthegathering.com. Last week I examined the possibility of Enchantress in Standard. A lot of readers were very excited about the return of Enchantress.

This week I'd like to see what I can do with Surreal Memoir. I received an overwhelming email response last week. People have a lot of plans for their Surreal Memoirs. Most people suggested that I try to build a Pyromancer Ascension deck that abuses the rebound mechanic.

I decided to build a Pyromancer Ascension deck for Standard. I scoured Gatherer for a few hours and eventually I was able to put together a list that I was happy with.

I'll start by explaining all my card choices:

Explore is one of the best cantrips available in Standard. Explore helps us accelerate our mana and draws us a card. A deck like this wants to sift through its library as fast as possible. I've always been happy with Explore in this type of strategy and I figured it would fit well in this type of deck.

Harrow is a great way to fix our mana. I'm being a little ambitious playing a 4 color deck with only 22 lands, but cards like Explore, Ponder, and Harrow help me fix my mana. Harrow also does a great job of thinning out my library so I can be assured that I draw enough gas once I start going off.

Naya Charm seems like a homerun for this type of strategy. I can use the "tap all creatures target opponent controls" option if I need a Fog, I can kill one of my opponent's threats with the bolt option, or I can set up infinite turns with the Regrowthoption. How do I set up infinite turns? I'm glad you asked. Once I have an active Pyromancer Ascension and a Naya Charm in the yard I can simply cast a Time Warp, copy it, use my extra turn to cast a Naya Charm returning the Time Warp from my graveyard to my hand, copy the Naya Charm returning Naya Charm from my graveyard to my hand, and take my next turn. Then I can just rinse and repeat as necessary to draw my entire library and have enough mana to cast a Banefire for half my opponent's life total. (The copy will finish them off.)

Pyromancer Ascension is the name of the game. A lot of your opponents may be packing cards like Oblivion Ring or Maelstrom Pulse. It's important to stick an Ascension early and force your opponent to spend time dealing with that instead of getting proactive. You shouldn't have a problem controlling the game once you have enough land in play with this deck.

Surreal Memoir: This really pushes the deck into a pretty competitive place. The synergies this card creates are really impressive. Most people that have known me for a long time are aware that Moment's Peace is my favorite Magic card of all time; I first started winning sanctioned matches with a Mirari's Wake deck back when I was in high school. Surreal Memoir is, often times, a Moment's Peace when it works in tandem with Fog or Naya Charm. An active Pyromancer Ascension really pushes this card over the top.

Surprisingly, though, Surreal Memoir didn't turn out to be the best rebound spell I tested. Survival Cache instantly proved its worth to me. The extra life is an excellent bonus and the rebound makes this card into a Divination. I especially enjoy activating my Ascension with a single card.

Time Warp is actually the best card in the deck. I would have played 4 copies of this if it cost a bit less money. Time Warp buys us time, digs us deeper through our library, acts as a win condition in the late game, and if we ever have an active Pyromancer Ascension in play, then our opponents are going to need a lot of help to win through this one.

Fog may seem a little out of place, but Fog is actually quite good in a deck like this. Most creature decks these days don't put any non-creature pressure on us. A Fog simply buys us an extra turn and helps to preserve our life total so our Survival Caches stay live.

Banefire is an obvious win condition of choice here. If you don't mind heavy thought you can simply chain enough turns to start looping your Lightning Bolt with Naya Charm and finish your opponent off that way. Most of my readers prefer having a cheat spell that lets them win the game without having to take a math test, though, so this seemed like a good one-of inclusion.